How you see your past, the experiences with events, situations, people in it reveals a lot of about the real you.
The way you were raised, the filtering process that happens from your inner most workings deep down inside. What you learned growing up or habits you picked up along the way.
Like the rear view mirror warning, disclaimer “Warning: Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.” Means be careful. Distortion, good and bad coloring happens that obscurs the truth or reality of the past life film frames. The ones already played out on the silver screen where they splash on the back of the inside of your head.
My youngest son Elliot texted me yesterday morning that he had had a dream about Nana the night before.
Followed by a two thumb tapped out telegraph that “I miss her”. We all do son and maybe because she was such a big part of our daily lives. She lived local and was such a loving, warm, make you feel good cheerful person.
I texted back “Today is Thursday. Tonight is Pizza Hut night.” We hit the hut, it was not a rut. And Nana would always order spaghetti with those spicy meatballs. While the table full of kids would chat it up. Debate how many and what kind of pizza pies would fit the hole in the end of the gullet.
Habits done like clockwork.
Ray Crone and his wife now deceased recently would always “hit the hut” the same night. Christine Nickerson and her long table of family too. It was a ritual, tradition and seemingly no big deal to anyone outside the routine. But part of sharing, caring and learning from grandparents. With three generations feasting, enjoying the time together and sustenance.
But kids grow up as they should. Elliot being picked up May 16th at the Portland Maine Jetport, home from his completed junior year at Colorado College. The next day packed up in black hand me down Honda Del Sol of his brother’s we just put some money in to thanks to Mitch Holmes. Master with a power wrench and screw driver.
And Bob Aucoin gifted with corrosion removal, the spray bomb and tail light housing replacement. Elliot pilots the black two door gas miser to The Forks. For his summer job leading a boat on white water rafting for Northern Outdoors expeditions on the Dead River. Hang on Elliot, folks grab the short rope and whisper some rafting safety prayers.
His brother Alex just got done working at A Basin ski area in Colorado. And begins his summer job before strapping on the boards again next winter for another Colorado winter ski season. Alex too has a summer job rafting the Colorado River a few states away from his little brother. Empty nest syndrome recovery has begun for Dad as a new life stage is entered.
The past starts and stops as folks get older.
The one constant I am jealous of is the sixty year life event polished marriages like my parents had. Til death do us part raising the four kids they had together, not a blend of two families which is a delicate procedure.
When two brand new people have the double whammy of working out the knot tying after saying “I do”. And keeping the troops happy who may or may not have seen the need for the matrimony. And struggle with the divorce that led up to it that they were not so wild about either.
It is easy to take for granted that sixty year marriage is just because both were ideally suited.
Neither partner was or ever is perfect. But start out or with time, lots of work and patience become perfect for each other. And each finally end up thinking the other is the best thing to happen in their life.
Those marriages of sixty years are like the rear view mirror warning. They don’t start out the way they appear now. Talk to someone that has logged that many miles. I do. And over and over here the secret is three little words. You are thinking “I love you”? All older folks will say yes, love is definitely a component.
But liking the person, seeing his or her strengths, not a long list of things you don’t like about them.
And wishing they would change to make them easier for you, me to take. That we don’t react so lovingly to when frustration sets in.
The three little words as one secret axiom to keep in mind always for marriage unity, onesness? When feathers get ruffled, as storms brew inside a household, surrender. “Dear probably right.”
I texted Elliot back later yesterday to let him know Nana’s farm flowers are popping, poking through the ground and doing nicely. Planted with love, kindness on her knees where she spent everyday to begin it with gratitude. She worked hard praying, studying, asking God for guidance every morning. I get up before five am every day to walk, study, pray and do the same sharing with my creator. Because I can not do it alone. There is much room for improvement as the previous blog posts spell out, making me an open book as I get it. But I am told in emails, there are a few others out there with room for improvement too.
Mom, Nana, Mary Lou to many lives on in our hearts and I meet people almost daily who also miss her here on Earth. Still alive in the beauty of God’s flowers. Her Christmas cactus that still blooms at my brother Stephen and Jenny’s home in Bangor Maine on Thatcher Street. Or when I see flocks, African violets she reminded me need to be lovingly dusted, watered, fed, talked to to survive.
I have no doubt whatsoever Nana is in a better place called Heaven. Because of her life dedication to God and with his help to be the way she treated people, looked at life and raised us all. And due to her accepting without batting an eye and smiling for all in the room when it was announced stage four cancer. Need to start chemo today. And she said I am trusting in the Lord if it is my time to go. To be with my Dad who had died a few years earlier.
Look for the good in others, yourself. Always.
And in past relationships, instead of seeing the bad, instead one by one see the good never fade moments that were enjoyed. Not cauterizing lingering feelings of love that you might try to smother with a soldering iron of bitterness or regret. Because you can never, should not try to “unlove” someone to make room for another. Because you can not.
Maine, outdoor places to be alone, to see and process events, relationships, other people in your life with 20 – 20 vision. Push in the clutch, just coast and let go, learn much in pauses you build in to your life in Maine, the way life should be.
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com